


There’s a voice in my head that drives my heel

by deirdre_c



Category: Supernatural, Tron (Movies), Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe- Tron, Cyberlove - Freeform, Dean throws one of those disk thingys, Frottage, Grid Sam - Freeform, Hacker Dean, M/M, Sam drives a cool light car, The Virtual Impala - Freeform, Tron - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-22
Updated: 2012-05-22
Packaged: 2017-11-05 20:01:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deirdre_c/pseuds/deirdre_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean Winchester was three years old, his mother was killed by a virus. It was a computer virus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There’s a voice in my head that drives my heel

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the super-disney challenge on LJ, an SPN fusion with _Tron: Legacy_. Heartfelt thanks to dreamlittleyo and girlguidejones for their stellar beta-duties and patient cheerleading on this project. And to ignited for the magnificent artwork to go with it. Title from a lyric by Golden Earring.

***

When Dean Winchester was three years old, his mother was killed by a virus. It was a computer virus.

***

_SamIam: Hey. Aren’t you likethegun from the perl rfc documentation boards?  
HeCTorAfram1an: who wants to know?  
SamIam: Sorry. Didn’t mean to come across all stalkery. I just thought I recognized you. Thought maybe I could pick your brain about some programming questions. I’m kinda new around here.  
HeCTorAfram1an: new to the usenet or new to the internet?  
SamIam: So if I laugh at your lame jokes, will you be willing to chat? Cause I’m game.  
HeCTorAfram1an: bitch  
SamIam: jerk  
_

 

Dean woke with his face mashed against the keyboard, mouth sour, odor ripe. He pondered whether he’d showered in a couple of days, then hauled himself up off the desk, only to slump back into his chair.

Dad had been gone about a week. His radio silence was nothing new—he’d been growing more and more distant and secretive in the past year—but it bothered Dean nonetheless. A worm the size of the one Dad was hunting probably had some pretty serious firepower behind it, and Dean always worried when he went up against something big without backup. 

But Dean had his own target to track down, alone, so he tapped the laptop to wake it and dove back into the sea of code onscreen, looking for a way to pick the lock on a particularly tricky backdoor.

***

_NTufnel11: you seen the new transformers movie?  
SamIam: Not yet. I don’t get out much.  
NTufnel11: hey, pipsqueak,“homeschooled” doesnt have to equal “no social life”_

 

John and Dean Winchester wore the white hats. Out there were hoards of malicious crackers, pirates, cypherpunks and phone phreaks and, as well-meaning as the loose affiliation of samurai teenagers in their parents’ basements were, sometimes someone needed to bring in some big guns. John Winchester was a man with a mission, and he’d trained his only son up to fight alongside him. Bit by bit, line of code by line of code, John worked anonymously, stealthily, to build up and maintain what others would tear apart. From what Dean could remember, it started as a search for some particular foe, a faceless enemy that had something to do with Dean’s mom’s death when Dean was little. But, even as Dean grew up and came to realize this was just some bizarre delusion of Dad’s— _It just took her, Dean. One minute she was there, the next she was gone. Sucked her right into the screen._ — he also knew that there were too few fighting on the side of cyber-right and so many more toiling away to ruin, steal, destroy. 

So Dean quit high school -- _What for? You could teach the class in your sleep._ —and skipped college— _all you need to know is at your fingertips, son_ —and followed his dad from place to place— _Can’t set up permanent shop. It makes it too easy for Them to track us down._ —fingers nimble and skin pale from long nights in front of computer screens.

Ten days since last hearing from Dad, and Dean was about ready to start tracking him down himself (yeah, good luck with that), when the front-desk clerk at his extended-stay motel knocked on his door. Dean opened the door to her—after carefully closing out the most incriminating windows and clearing his cache— and saw that in her hand was an honest-to-god postcard. He accepted it with a murmured, “Thanks,” and checked to see that it was Dad’s handwriting, noting that the postmark was five days previous. It read: **Stay put and head down. Memorize this and burn it. Share it with NO ONE. I’ll contact you soon.**

Below the message was twelve simple lines of code. 

“Head down.” Not good. That meant he wanted Dean 100% dark, jacked out, offline. What the hell was Dad up to? 

Dean shuffled backward to sit down on the bed and immediately sought to decipher what the code was intended to do, but it appeared to be a standard UNIX sweep-remove process for a background daemon called yed. He flipped the card over, searching for additional information, a secret message, anything. But try as he might, he couldn’t figure out why John would think this might be worth going lights out. 

Dean crumpled up the postcard, grabbed the remote, and turned to the Food Network, slouching back onto the headboard. It was going to be a long wait.

***

_  
**Space Paranoids Player SamIam Logged in**  
Br00seCampbe11: got yourself a microphone yet? gamings more fun when you talk and play. plus theres phone sex nudgenudgewinkwink  
SamIam: Nope. Stuck with typing. Hey. Heads up. Recognizer on your left. Better take it out.  
Br00seCampbe11: watch the master. I’ll show you how it’s done sammy.  
SamIam: Fuck you, I could play this game with my eyes closed.  
Br00seCampbe11: you gotta back off him  
wait ‘til he’s ranged and—  
—yahatzee!  
SamIam: Amazing.  
Br00seCampbe11: its all in the wrist.  
SamIam: I wish sarcasm translated better over the internet.  
_

 

When Dean woke the next morning, there was a text on his phone. **123 Pine Street. Lawrence, Kansas. Go in person to check out lead. Meet me at Caleb’s when you’re done.**

On the one hand, his inexplicable down time was a lot shorter than Dean had feared. On the other… Lawrence. Just the name alone made his belly feel made of lead weight. Dean had once sworn to himself he’d never go back there.

But despite his trepidations, he quickly started dismantling his set up, unplugging his portable server and carrying it out to the trunk of the Impala.

***

_  
AngusJung: wanna help me set up this honeynet? i’m about to catch some sonsofbitches trying to launch a trojan from an ip in maryland.  
SamIam: Sure. Hook me up.  
AngusJung: and youve gotta see this new chicks blowjob vid at BAB.net.  
SamIam: Yeah. Well. Don’t bother sending me that.  
SamIam: I’m not actually all that into girls just so you know.  
AngusJung: k. no prob sammich. im an equal opportunity player myself. plenty of gay porn on my harddrive too. try this…  
SamIam: Whatever man.  
SamIam: I have to admit I was worried about telling you.  
AngusJung: naw. im down with that.  
_

 

It’s not like all Dean’s skills were virtual. Sometimes a job called for sneaking into an office to get a peek at a password or making a mirror of a hard drive on a stand-alone computer, and over the years Dean had become fairly expert at B&E. 

So getting into the mild-mannered suburban house Dad had sent him to was a cinch. But once in, Dean couldn’t find a thing out of the ordinary. The house was deserted, last family cleared out—pretty recently, judging by the continued power and running water—and no one new moved in. He started in the attic and worked his way down, checking rooms and closets, tapping walls and searching for crawl spaces, wondering what Dad was looking for in such a mundane place.

It wasn’t until he reached the basement that he found something. A door behind a door with an old-fashioned but seriously out-of-place card-reader lock set into it. Dean pulled out a small device from the pocket of his jacket (made by some clever bastard, if he did say so himself, out of an old Walkman) and bent over the lock. There was a hum followed by a soft click and the door swung open as if by an invisible hand. 

Dean moved in eagerly, like a cat slipping out of the house for the night.

Sepia light filtered in from glassblock windows set into the house’s foundation. The dead, stale air was thick in his throat as he looked around at the tiny closet-sized room made smaller by a jumbled fire hazard of prehistoric computer components and wires and sharp-edged metal housings piled high up every wall. Some of the equipment was standard-issue 80s Radio Shack: boxy, beige and black museum-quality antiques that harkened back to names like Commodore and Compaq, actual CP/M devices with cathode-ray tube monitors. Others appeared to be pretty rarified, including big, cabinet-sized beasts with labels containing VAX and PDP covered with messy heaps of cannibalized chips, lenses, stripped copper wire and other gear. An enormous pile of old magazines had cascaded into the open area, and he saw papers and pictures pinned to the wall on top of a map of some circuit board labeled “The Grid.”

Dean heard the door close behind him. He didn’t look back. Instead, he rubbed his hands together and sat down in a desk chair in front of what looked like some main keyboard controls. He reached down to flip the switch on a power strip bristling with a Gordian knot of cabling, and, fantastically, components began to hum to life. 

“Like the man says, there’s no problems, only solutions.” Dean wiped his hand across the screen to clear it of dust and wriggled into a more comfortable position, cracking his knuckles in anticipation and summoning up his hacking muse. He drew a breath and began entering code, spinning out ASCII and Prolog like an historian would apply Latin or Aramaic, looking for openings into the ancient programming.

He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, turned to scan the shelves behind him for what it could have been. Just nerves, though, because everything remained still as a tomb beyond the softly pulsing lights of the newly-juiced equipment. Nonetheless, his fingers twitched to open up a window and chat with his old sidekick geekboy. Even after months— no, nearly two years— of radio silence, he missed sharing his adventures with Sam, the snarky comments, the insightful advice. Even though they’d met years before, practically grown up together online, he’d never even met the guy; heck, he could’ve been a girl or a dirty old man for all Dean knew beyond what little Sam said about his real life. But goddamn if every day Dean’s didn’t miss Sam having his back on operations like this. For a guy who spent 95% of his time alone, he wished he were better at being lonely.

Dean shook off the maudlin hanky-weeping and turned back to the task at hand, ignoring everything but the lines of code that flowed over the monitor’s screen. This was a contest he relished; it was an article of faith with him that no machine or program was a match for Dean Winchester’s badass programming skills. 

Dean set to work and quiet minutes ticked by until, without warning, something struck him in the back. A blast of pain and burning radiated from a quarter-sized circle between his shoulder blades. Dean struggled to flinch or to flee, but was rocked in the chair by spasms of his own outstretched arms and legs. The whole room flashed monochromatic, except his shining body. He looked down at his hands, saw them blur, separate into pixels, the rest of him quickly becoming indistinct, evanescing. 

It seemed to Dean that the computer screen rose up to meet him, to swallow him. He swam, for a time, in complete blackness. Then came a speck of light, a pinpoint of brilliance, and his mind seized on it. Soon it was a globe, becoming clearer and clearer, a gridded orb crisscrossed with currents of light, hinting at exhaustive detail. Dean circled it, or it rotated before him.

Closer and closer, the landscape before him became one of angular towers, banded powerlines, hulking, mountain-like topography with rivers of white radiance, and murky, blasted places suggesting wastelands. Dean plummeted down a tunnel that appeared as if he were dropping through an infinite series of hoops of energy. He fell and fell, completely disoriented, and at last the tunnel ended. He shot from its mouth, and something resembling ground flew up at him.

***

 _  
SamIam: Hey Dean, you’ve got to check out this new workaround I rigged up for double encryption defenses.  
JaunBonham: dude. how’d you know it was me? this is a brand new username.  
SamIam: …  
JaunBonham: sam?  
SamIam: IDK. Guess I just recognized your style of code. Gotta go now, mom calling.  
_

 

He came to. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious, lying there in what looked like the middle of an empty street. The first thing he noticed was the cold; it wasn’t a wintertime cold, but a someone-turned-the-air conditioning-too-low cold. Then he realized he was clad in some strange sort of tight-fitting bodysuit with gear that encased his shoulders and forearms. He rolled over, raised his hands for a better look, which turned into an abrupt, unexpected jerk of surprise.

Incandescent tracks, resembling nothing so much as circuitry, ran over his arms and legs and chest. They glowed a cold whitish-blue in the dark, the color of deep-undersea creatures. As he peered closer, it was almost as if he could make out, not with his regular eyesight but with some other sense, that the glowing tracks, his clothes, the pavement that he knelt on, all were made up of programming code. Infinitesimal ones and zeros locked together like DNA to create solid mass. Dean shook his head, trying to clear it. 

As he struggled to his feet, a narrow spotlight, abrupt and blinding, locked down on him. He shielded his eyes, sharp gusts of air swirling around him as he squinted up at the source. Impossible. A _Recognizer._ Not some simulation from a game on a screen, though, but something concrete and three-dimensional, floating unspeakably above him, huge and _monstrous_. “Oh, man,” he whispered to himself. “This isn’t happening.”

He turned to run, but the ground he stood on thrust upward like a branchless tree trunk, rising to meet the platform descending from the ship. He swayed, nearly fell, and swung around to see, a few yards away, a number of … men? Big, rough-looking uglies in black armor, scarlet lines accentuating their breadth and bulk. 

The group of figures moved toward him, the tall staffs they carried glowing dully, menacingly. Two stepped forward while the others fanned out around Dean. “Another stray,” the first commented to his comrade, then grabbed Dean roughly by the arm, shoving him toward their craft. Dean looked into his face and saw that his eyes were solid black. “Get inside, program.”

This was too much to absorb. Several possible explanations flitted through his mind: this had to be some kind of dream or hallucination, maybe a coma? Had he fallen and hit his head? Had someone slipped something into his drink at a bar? Because this was a pretty fucked up acid trip.

Real or not, Dean wasn’t going down without a fight. He tore himself out of the guy’s grip and shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, not much of a fist-fighter, but ready to defend himself. In the blink of an eye, one of the sentries reversed his staff and struck Dean in the thigh. There was a crack of light, and an agonizing shock of pain rocketed up and down from Dean’s hip to his foot. He fell to one knee with a cry, and found himself hauled back up again. 

“Fuck! Stop. Wait! I’m not a… a program,” Dean panted as they crowded him, but he stumbled painfully forward. Maybe he was lying in intensive care someplace with a brain tumor, but even in a dream, Dean didn’t feel like tasting the business end of one of those staffs again.

“You will come with us.”

***

 _  
j0nb0nj0v1: Sam. Fuck, where have you been? Haven’t seen you in ages.  
SamIam: What?  
j0nb0nj0v1: It’s Dean, bitch.  
SamIam: I think you’ve got the wrong person.  
j0nb0nj0v1: Quit fooling around.  
SamIam: No really. I don’t know any Dean. Just opened this account a few weeks ago.  
j0nb0nj0v1: Oh. Sorry. An old friend had that same username.  
**j0nb0nj0v1 logged off**  
_

 

The cell was small, empty, a low, cramped space shaped by smooth, confining planes. He leaned against the wall, looking down at his forearms. The whitish-blue tracks lining them continued to glow and pulse. Exploring the little room, Dean found there was no way to sit or lie down comfortably, no space to stretch. The ceiling was solid but transparent, diffuse light from above casting no shadows, and he could glimpse the soles of the feet of a guard on patrol overhead.

On opposite walls were narrow, curved openings a single hand-span wide that allowed him a view into the cells on either side, and when he glanced through the one on the left, he was just in time to see the far blank wall appear to thin and disappear, a large figure slipping silently through the slim opening. 

Dean found himself looking into the worried face of a stranger, taller than Dean, but not one of the guards, his face bare, features human and young. He was wearing armor like Dean’s, stretched tight over shoulders as broad as a linebacker, limned too like Dean’s with bright, circuit-like lines from neck to heel. 

Dean moved closer to the slit.

The guy flashed a quick, dimpled smile of greeting, but then his brow furrowed again, his eyes so soft and concerned Dean almost felt he should be the one doing the reassuring. Before Dean could say anything, though, words rushed out of the stranger, low and hurried, “Hey, you okay? I’m sorry I couldn’t find you sooner, but I didn’t think you could—How did you—? Never mind. We’ll get to that later. First, we have to get you out of here, but there’s a lot of layers of security. I can’t—“ The guy flinched and glanced around with a look of surprise at the sound of boots tramping closer. He swung back to focus on Dean. “Listen. They’ll put you in the arena and I’ll find you again there. You can use your disc, but protect it, and don’t get yourself derezzed before then, okay?”

Dean’s head spun, he felt like he’d only caught one word in three. “Wait! What am I supposed to do?”

He smiled again, this time reassuringly, then stepped back. “Survive,” was his response.

“What is this place? Who are you?”

The guy pressed his hand to the wall of his cell, which dissolved in front of him, the sudden exit opening up to a corridor bathed in dim light. “This is the Grid. And I’m Sam, of course.” Then he slipped out of sight.

***

He said he was Sam. The Sam who Dean had first run into online as a teenager? Sam who had popped up here and there and everywhere: on message boards, on listservs, when Dean was digging up underground servers, who’d played with him in RPGs and on Halo squadrons over years and stayed with him even as the internet grew broader and deeper? Sam, who figured prominently in Dean’s secret fantasies, to whom every random bar or club hookup was compared. Sam who, two years ago, had sent a cryptic email to one of Dean’s most clandestine addresses, telling Dean he had to go offline for awhile, and was never heard from again?

Sam.

That was enough to fully convince Dean that all of this was quite simply the most lucid dream in the history of human neurobiology. So he decided to stop trying to make sense of things and just go along for the ride. 

A door in the wall of his own cell materialized and two of the burly stormtroopers from before entered. The darkness of their cowls and the dangerous energy of their quarterstaffs made it difficult not to be intimidated, but Dean hadn’t practiced a lifetime of bravado in the face of authority to shrink back now. “Look, if this is about those parking tickets, I can explain everything.”

“It’s time for the arena, program.”

Sam had said something about an arena, too. Well, online Dean was a gamer fucking second-to-none, so if this whole loony setup hinged on an ability to play videogames, Dean figured he might be good to go.

They walked though a length of chill, colorless corridors, and no matter what he said to the guards they didn’t respond to his comments or questions. But throwing out some cocky insults at least made him feel more like himself. That is, until they herded him down a dim tunnel and he emerged onto the floor of an enormous stadium. Hallucination or no, this place was fucking intimidating.

He could think of no other structure this huge; it was as if the Superdome and the Grand Canyon had been fused together in strange contours of geometric shapes and light. He could only catch glimpses of the arena at first: the flat, polished surface, the high walls lined with a mass of shouting, faceless spectators. One of the guards shoved him to join a file of prisoners marching past another group, armored and gleaming in red, who wore discs affixed to their backs. Dean reached over his shoulder to find a disc secured between his shoulder blades as well. 

_Protect your disc_ , Sam had said. Okay then. At least he knew what that meant now. Sort of.

A shadow fell over the complex. For the first time, Dean looked up, and his mouth hung open. 

The sky of this world was a fantastic vision, varying between pitch black and flashes of color like heat lightning, strung with remarkable shapes and clouds of unfathomable patterns. Above the arena was a colossal craft, larger than the largest blimp or plane Dean could imagine, menacing in a sterile, impervious way. On a screen on the side of the craft an image appeared. What appeared to be a man, dressed in armor like the guards but without a cowl, his bare face middle aged and nondescript, but with inhuman, bilious yellow eyes. 

He spoke.

“Greetings, Programs,” the voice rolled out, silencing the rumble of the crowd. “Until the last of the Special Children emerges victorious, you will fight in their place. Win, and take your post in my armies. Lose… and die.”

Even as Dean scanned the arena, additional screens flashed open, displaying varying angles of the fighters themselves. Robotic cameras hovered around the space, the fist-sized spheres gleaming as they swooped into the arena proper. He couldn’t make out what the crowd was chanting, but its steady drumbeat made Dean’s heart skip and jump uncomfortably in counterpoint.

A woman’s voice rang out, calmly announcing match after match, Dean struggling to take in the scene as dozens of pairs of figures hurled their discs at break-neck speeds. At the first direct hit in one fight, Dean flinched, disbelieving, as the losing figure didn’t just fall but _shattered_ , a shower of bright pixilation bouncing across the court. Over and over the vivid discs spun and ricocheted, destroying competitor after competitor, until it there was no one left of the challengers but Dean. 

He walked cautiously forward onto the proving-ground, the rim of his disc flaring to life as he reached back to unsheathe it. _You can play this,_ he assured himself. _Think of it as Wii Frisbee_.

“Combatant Three vs. Winchester,” the announcer intoned. 

His opponent appeared at the end opposite him, his back to turned, looking up at the screen, the crowd’s screams hiking up in pitch as they wildly chanted the name “Win-Chest-Er! Win-Chest-Er!” But, what the hell? They sure weren’t cheering for Dean.

Unlike the other programs in the games who wore black and white, this guy’s dark armor was outlined blood-red— like the guards’, like the uniform worn by the yellow-eyed man on the screen above—and sat thick over his shoulders and the gauntlets bracing his arms. As he moved, turned, something tickled in the back of Dean’s brain, a sense of familiarity, recognition. Then the figure strode forward, and Dean gasped when light illuminated his face.

“Dad?”

But it wasn’t Dad— the face was blank, smooth, something slightly, creepily off— and there was no response but the sharp flick of the wrist that sent a flash of scarlet tearing towards Dean. He had to throw himself to the right, rolling over on the slick floor, to avoid getting struck by the man’s —no, the _program’s_ — disc.

He clambered to his feet and threw up his disc like a shield to scarcely block another projectile. This Dad look-alike had a second disk. “Fuck you,” Dean muttered. “Is that even legal?”

As if he could have heard Dean from across the platform, his opponent caught Dean’s gaze and grinned, a nasty, dead-eyed smile like a snake preparing to swallow a mouse. Then its eyes flashed, darkened, coated flat-black and inhuman, and if Dean had had any lingering fear or hope that this was somehow John Winchester dragged to this world with him, it was instantly snuffed out.

Dean realized he couldn’t play defense forever, and sent his own disc flying, trying to aim low and hard, but not even coming close to a strike on his adversary. The contest went on and on, Dean barely making his feet again before flinging himself clumsily out of the way each time as sickeningly near misses brushed past. Dean was barely holding his own, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep it up for much longer. His heart was beating a painful, panicked rhythm as he leaped to catch his returning disc. It hummed as his hand gripped it, white-knuckled.

All he wanted was to wake up, but the longer he fought, the more tired and sore he grew, the less he could convince himself that this was just a nightmare and not some real world. 

As he blocked a particularly wicked ricochet, he heard his opponent make a low, pleased sound. Dean had thought he’d been doing well, but in that instant realized he was being toyed with. The fact that it laughed with his dad’s voice made bile rise in his throat.

Dean’s concentration slipped, and his opponent’s disc grazed his arm, slicing through the thick fabric suit with ease. Dean cried out, step-stuttering backward into the wall of the arena, a thin line of blood dripping from his biceps and the crowd’s unearthly roar thundering in his ears. 

His opponent approached, the look of disdain and triumph on its face nothing like Dean had ever seen on Dad’s. Dean tried to lunge sideways and found he couldn’t escape, couldn’t even move, as though he was pinned in place by unseen shackles.

“I could’ve killed you a hundred times today,” it growled at him, “but this was worth the wait, _User_.”

Dean clenched his jaw, not willing to give the thing the pleasure of asking for mercy, but he couldn’t help the howl that burst from him as pain exploded across his gut as the thing drew its disc across Dean’s abdomen, carving a line of fire across skin and muscle, and then another. Dean writhed, head thrown back, nearly blacking out from the burning agony.

It leaned closer, Dad’s features twisted in a rictus of sadistic pleasure. Dean couldn’t deny the reality of its breath hot in his face. Another slow, burning cut sliced low across Dean’s belly; it felt like he was being filleted alive. 

“Dad. No,” he pled. He knew it wasn’t his father, but he couldn’t help himself. Dad would help him, would stop this. 

And for a moment the program faltered, focused on him sharply, something like puzzlement drifting across its face.

In that moment’s hesitation, Dean caught a flash of white from the corner of his eye, and suddenly another disc slammed into Dad’s doppelganger, ripping through its leg and dropping it to the ground. The invisible bonds holding Dean vanished and he too slid down the wall and fell, hard, onto his side.

“Illegal combatant on the grid,” the mechanized voice called out impassively overhead.

Dean couldn’t muster the strength to sit up, but he managed to open his eyes to see a figure rushing toward him, kicking his opponent’s disc to the far end of the concourse and kneeling down. Urgent hands checked Dean’s wounds, gripped his shoulders. The touch felt like cool rushing water, like the sharp tingle of a sleeping limb awakening.

“Illegal combatant on the grid.”

“Can you get up?” Sam asked, low and frantic. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

Dean nodded and heaved himself up on one elbow, Sam reaching around to pull him up with an arm over his shoulders. The outraged shrieks of the crowd were deafening, and Dean didn’t think he was going to make it very far, but he didn’t have to. Steps away was… was Dean’s very own car. He blinked stupidly. No, not quite the Impala, this vehicle was sleeker, narrower, its tires huge and boundaries traced in radiant light like everything here, but still. The resemblance was undeniable. 

“I don’t remember telling you about my baby,” he muttered. 

“Get in. Hurry,” Sam retorted, and Dean had to bite his lip to keep from screaming in pain as Sam bundled him roughly into the passenger seat. 

Sam slid behind the steering controls and the vehicle jetted forward out of the arena, quickly followed by a pack of what looked like glowing motorcycles, dragging luminous trails behind them.

Dean turned gingerly to look behind them and realized their car was leaving a trail as well, solid and lethal from the looks of it, as Sam zagged across the Grid lines, making one of their opponents strike the barrier they left behind and derez into a shower of bouncing glasslike cubes. 

The cycles were faster than Sam’s car, blowing by them and leaving a pair of neon light walls in their wake. They closed in, trying to sandwich the car in between them.

There was silence in the car as Sam swept them through fantastic evasive maneuvers and Dean simply tried to hang on. This definitely wasn’t the Impala. It wove and swerved, Sam leading their followers into a series of complex traps.

Another cycle flipped over and derezzed, but still more pursuers drove through the jagged shards of their comrade. Others were coming, but Dean realized they were facing a more dangerous threat. Sam was driving them on a collision course with the Grid’s boundary wall. 

“Slow down!” Dean said. “You can’t—“

At the last possible second, Sam punched another button on the control panel. Two electric blue missiles fired from somewhere underneath the chassis, and they blew a massive hole in the wall rising up to meet them. A split second later, the car slipped through the opening.

Sam looked over at him and smirked. “I’m Batman,” he said. Then the brightness of the city and the arena faded behind them until the car was the lone glimmer in a vast wasteland.

For some unknown amount of time, Dean leaned his head against the vehicle’s window and focused on breathing shallow and quick against terrific pain, the lights of the car illuminating only a few meters of terrain ahead, the rest of the world in blackness. He was shivering. He couldn’t stop shivering. 

Then Sam pulled to a stop. “You gonna make it?”

Dean thought about it for a moment, pretty sure he didn’t want to die before finding out what the hell this was all about. “I’ll make it.”

“Good,” Sam sighed. “Good. I’m going to try something that might help. Just… don’t move.”

Dean nodded, curious despite the waves of red still washing through him. Sam held his hand a few inches above Dean’s stomach, closing his eyes in concentration. And although Sam didn’t touch them, the cuts on Dean’s belly and chest begin to prickle and itch, then the pain began to subside, dwindling, soothing, a sense of ease flowing slowly as if Sam was pouring honey over the wounds. Minutes passed, sweat beading on Sam’s brow in the chill of the car’s interior, his hand starting to shake, until he finally sat back with a gasp. The lines of light on Sam’s suit had dulled to a faint grey, and a thin column of blood trickled from his nose, which he absently wiped away.

“Are you okay?” Dean asked, concerned. Then he looked down at himself, found that his clothing was repaired and his wounds gone. “What the hell was that?”

Sam ignored him, closed his eyes, lolled back against the headrest with a huge grin on his face. He murmured under his breath, something like, “Didn’t know if that would work.” Suddenly he sat up, fumbling in a compartment in the car’s console. “Here. Drink this.” He produced a small flask and placed it in Dean’s hand.

Dean raised his eyebrows, then took a sip. It felt like he was drinking sunlight. Three big gulps and he was warm for the first time since he got here. _Wherever here was._ The stuff was better than a shot of whiskey or Red Bull or fucking liquid ecstasy. Sam snatched the flask back and chugged from it himself. Dean’s gaze traveled over Sam’s lips wrapped around the rim, his head thrown back to reveal his long, corded neck as he drank, and Dean recalled late nights of chatting with this boy-- no, man—online. Shy confidences and innuendo, adolescent sex advice and teasing and what passed for Dean as flirting. Even in Dean’s most absurd fantasies over the years, he never imaged Sam would be like this: gorgeous, strong, heroic.

Sam finished drinking and licked his lips, and Dean felt a pulse of heat in his groin.

 _What does that even mean here?_ , Dean wondered, and figured he could blame the strange wanderings of his brain on delirium from his sudden liberation from pain. 

Sam turned to look at him, glance roaming across Dean’s face, and Dean couldn’t wait any longer. “So who are you? Where did you come from?”

“It’s complicated, Dean.”

“Well, talk slow and use small words, I’ll try to keep up.” 

Sam snorted, and started the vehicle moving forward again, flying out into the black expanse before them, rough landscape morphing from boulder-ridden foothills to mountains. “I was born here on the Grid.”

“But you’re not a program? You’re human, like me? I don’t understand. Smaller words. Miniscule.”

He sighed. “Let’s get to the safe house and we’ll explain everything there. There’s a lot we need to tell you, and I know she’ll be freaking out until we get there.”

“Who?”

Sam looked at him sidelong. “Mom.”

***

They drove on in silence, Dean digesting that additional baffling little nugget while Sam alternated negotiating hairpin turns with shooting Dean glances, a gleeful little smile tugging at his lips, as if this was a holiday for him and Dean was his present.

Dean couldn’t help looking back. He’d never had a particular image of Sam in his brain, couldn’t quite pin it down that way, but there was always this sense of a gangly teen, long-fingered, shaggy-haired. After Sam disappeared from his computer screen, Dean would admit he’d go to bars, pick up tall, skinny guys and call them Sam in his head. Of course, there was always the chance that all along Sam was a pockmarked 46-year old in a Cheetos-stained bathrobe, but Dean had never believed it.

Turns out the truth—if what he was experiencing right now was true— was much, much stranger.

A sheer mountainside reared suddenly up before them, but before Dean could flinch, a cavern opened up— _okay, so Sam really is Batman_ , Dean thought—and the car slid inside. 

Sam parked and threw his sleek, space-age car door open, and Dean heard the familiar but incongruous sound of hinges squeaking. So bizarre. Dean climbed out, too, moving gingerly until his mind caught up with his body’s knowledge that his wounds were gone.

Sam led him across the hangar and into a sealed chamber, clearly an elevator even if Dean felt no lift or drop, because when the doors opened again, it was onto a huge, low-ceilinged room, neat and spare like the cross between a luxury hotel lobby and an Apple store at the local mall. Wall-to-wall windows at the far end of the room revealed a view as if from atop a mountain peak, the Grid glowing in the distance. The sole occupant of the room was silhouetted against the Grid’s lights, but turned and strode toward them as Dean followed Sam through the elevator doors.

“Sam, are you completely insane?” the woman asked. “How could you go into the Center without warning, without backup? Are you _trying_ to—“

She cut off when she saw Dean. Her eyes widened, and she reached out toward him. “John?”

“No, it’s… I’m Dean.” She was small and blonde, thin, older than in the pictures Dad kept tucked in his wallet and his duffle. Her clothes were off-white, the lines of light that limned them softening rather than accenting, her disc a near-invisible arc. 

“You’re here. You’re really here.” She glanced briefly at Sam, then reached out to touch Dean’s shoulder as if to reassure herself that he was solid. He leaned unconsciously into the touch.

“I’m here.”

“You’re big,” she said, then laughed softly. “Of course you are.” She stepped in, wrapping her arms around him tightly, and he hugged back, his cheek resting against her cornsilk hair.

“And you’re… my mom?” The word felt odd on Dean’s tongue, as if it wasn’t _large_ enough somehow. He still couldn’t believe it. Scoured his brain for memories of her, but she’d died— left— when he was too young. All his touchstones for her came from the few, precious few, scraps of reminiscence Dad would let drop in the wee hours after a night at the bottom of a bottle.

“Dean.” She pulled away and smiled, a bit sadly.

It was like one of those optical illusions clicking into place, and he recognized her. His mother, Mary Winchester. All the pictures, the dim, long-buried memories of safety and bedtime and stories, the Polaroid stuck above that damned computer in that hidden office. 

Her brow furrowed. “Tell me how you got here.” 

Sam chimed in, “They had him in the Arena by the time I found a way to break him out. He was almost a goner.”

Mary shushed him and Dean explained, “I found your office in the old house in Lawrence. I got a text message I thought was from Dad, sending me there. I’m guessing it wasn’t from Dad after all.”

“It wasn’t from us, either,” Mary said, shooting another glance at Sam for confirmation. “We haven’t had communication through the Portal in more than two years. It must have been the AZL. Why would it want you here?”

“What is the AZL?”

She ran her hand over her face. “I don’t know how much your dad told you about us.” Dean shook his head. “We met in college after he returned from Vietnam,” she continued, “and we both got involved in Engineering School’s operations science program at KU and eventually a new department created for computer science. It was so amazing back then, every day a new discovery. But progress was slow. We moved so slowly back then.” She stopped, gazed into the distance remembering. “John and I graduated and took random jobs so we could pour everything we had into buying all the equipment and components we could get our hands on. The Digital Frontier. That’s what your dad called what we were creating. I called it the Grid.”

“Wait,” said Dean. “You and dad actually _created_ all this?”

“Sort of. We started it. But we couldn’t work fast enough, just the two of us. So we dreamed up a program, an Adaptive Z-notation Loop, that could autonomously help us structure and organize the programs we were building on the Grid.”

Dean automatically started envisioning how to write such a code, but pulled his attention back as Mary went on, “The more we worked, the more sophisticated the AZL became. At some point it morphed, evolved into something with free will. It wasn’t until I tried to shut it down that it retaliated, used some of the hardware in my office against me, I’m not sure how— the laser array, maybe? —but it actually scanned my body, digitized it. Brought me here onto the Grid.”

Dean thought back to what he saw and felt in that basement room in Lawrence and couldn’t dismiss it as the crazed, science fiction impossibility that it sounded.

“It turns out I was pregnant at the time.” She looked over to where Sam sat perched on the arm of a low couch, watching Dean intently for his reaction. “And I wasn’t the only one it brought here, there were other mothers, too. Sam is one of a group of special children, born here on the Grid. We don’t know exactly how many there are, but from what we can tell, the AZL needs one of them in order to open up the Portal from this side, in order for it—along with the army of viral programs it’s creating— to get out.” 

Sam stood and walked over to her, taking her hand. “As far as we can tell,” he said to Dean, “all of the other mothers were killed, the other human children like me raised by programs. Mom and I have been able to hide out here. But starting two years ago, the AZL began rounding the other kids up, putting them in the games. Winnowing the field.” Sam’s forehead furrowed with anger. 

It was all too much at once. Dean couldn’t get his bearings, stomach lurching, like he’d stepped onto black ice and felt his feet flying out from under him. “Why didn’t you contact Dad?”

“I did,” Mary replied. “Of course I did. But it took me a long time to engineer a pirate link to the outside world from here that would go undetected by the AZL. Remember, back then the real world wasn't as networked as it is now. But once I broke through, my first message was a call for help to your father. He—“ She trailed off, turning to walk over to the large glass wall facing the dark plains. “He didn’t believe it was me.” She shrugged. “It was very painful for him, thinking I was dead, that the message I’d sent was some kind of a fake. It didn’t take long before I stopped trying to convince him I was still alive and started posing as random colleagues, online allies, feeding him information he needed to get closer to the answer himself. Sam did the same for you, when he was old enough.”

Dean turned to Sam. “So, you’re my brother? You and mom, imprisoned here. All this time, and you never—You could have told me—” Dean didn’t even know how to continue. He had a _brother_. Sam was that brother.

Sam just looked at him, sad-eyed like a scolded dog.

“Eventually,” Mary continued, “we realized that it was too dangerous to draw attention to the AZL and its plans. We could contain it by keeping Sam— and as many of the other Special Children as we can—out of its reach. Without one of them, it can’t break the Portal's one-way barrier into real space.”

“That’s your plan? Permanent exile? For all of you?” Dean was appalled. “We need to fight!”

“We need to protect the outside world. Your world. You know better than most how vulnerable humans’ technology is. An attack by a self-aware program bent on eradicating Users from the world? Who would stand against that?”

“Dad will. Lots of programmers will. _You_ will when you get out of here. We need to make a run for it.”

“Dean, don’t rush.”

“What do you mean?” Dean demanded. “It’s getting closer to escaping every minute, you said so yourself.”

Sam broke in, “The moment one of us is on the Grid, the AZL will stop at nothing to get our disc. We have to be careful.” 

Careful? Is that what Sam had been when he’d waltzed right into that Arena full of programs to find him? Hell no, he’d been reckless as all fuck and could’ve ended up captured or killed for _nothing_. Dean couldn’t take it, fear and confusion and the pain at this lifelong deception bursting out of him. He put his hands on Sam’s chest and slammed him back against the wall. It felt like real sparks should fly as the circuits on Sam’s chest lit and flared. Dean spit, “Years. _Years_! We were— All that time you were _lying_ to me, every day, every minute. Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve done something.”

“This is why I didn’t tell you. Your life is in danger now. Out there, the AZL can threaten, make plans to destroy your world, but Mom and I can fight it, contain it, find allies to work against it. And you and Dad are safe. But in here? In here you can be killed, Dean. You almost were. “ Sam’s jaw clenched like a fist, and he twisted out from Dean’s grip.

“So what?” Dean retorted. “You and Mom live some kind of half-life in this sunless prison just to keep Dad and me safe?”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit.”

Sam looked at Mary, a silent exchange of words. “Maybe we can find a way to get you home. We think Dad might have the Colt code by now. From out there, you guys can use it to stop the AZL.“

“What is the Colt code?” 

“Something simple and elegant that can destroy the AZL,” Mary said. “Your father’s been working on it for about a year now, he thinks it’s to be used on a standard daemon attack.”

Dean sucked in a breath. It couldn’t be that simple. “I have the Colt.”

“You what?”

“Dad gave to me right before I ended up here. Wrote it by hand on a postcard and sent it to me.” 

Mary spun away and groaned, “Oh John. You idiot.”

That wasn’t the reaction Dean had hoped for. “I don’t understand. I thought this was a good thing?” He looked to Sam, still pissed at him, but hoping for more answers.

“If you know it, then it’s on your disc,” Sam said. “In here, if the AZL gets hold of it before we can find a way to infect it with the code, the Colt is useless.”

“I can destroy my disc,” Dean offered. An unpleasant feeling swept through him at the thought, but he bulled on. “Then it can’t get the code, right?” 

“No. Destroying your disc means you die. If you die here on the Grid, that’s Game Over.” Mary and Sam exchanged worried glances. Sam turned to Dean, lips pressed tightly together, then said, “We have to get you out of here.”

And that just pissed Dean off even more, so he got back up in Sam’s face. “Twenty years of you two cowering here, but then suddenly I show up and it’s,” he pitched his voice high, “’Oh, let’s save Dean!’” He swayed on his feet, lightheaded for a moment. Sam caught him above the elbow to support him and a shock spiraled down his arm. Dean twitched, shook him off.

Mary stepped between them. “As much as the sound of sibling bickering warms the cockles of my parental heart, Dean, you need some sleep. We can talk about this in the morning.”

“Sleep?”

“Yeah, we’re still human, not program,” Sam said, and looked like he was about to take Dean’s arm again before he thought better of it. “Come on. You can use my bed.”

Sam led him down a corridor of several doors, opening the last on the right and urging Dean in. Once through the doorway, Dean felt like Dorothy stepping into a fucked-up version of Oz. Sam’s room was tricked out like every no-tell motel Dean had stayed in with Dad over the past 20 years: a queen bed with a spread like an old paint tarp, wallpaper peeling in the corners, grimy pedestal sink against one wall. After the sharp, austere blacks and whites of Grid space, the colors here—normal greens and beiges and russets—made everything seem muted and indistinct.

Dean peered around, “Okay, this is so weird.”

“Yeah. God, sorry. I—“ Sam blushed bright red, his face the dictionary definition of sheepish. And yeah, Dean should probably find this super-stalkery and creepy, but instead was strangely gratified that Sam would construct this elaborate connection between them. He supposed it explained the car, too. Dean wondered if Sam could rustle him up some pie.

“Don’t worry about it,” he assured Sam. “I could use a break from all the Star Wars sets.” Dean sank down onto the bed, his muscles quivering with exhaustion. “Where are you going to sleep?” He tried to hide any tone in his voice that would imply he was hoping Sam might lie down next to him.

“I’ll catch up later. Right now I have some research to do. We don’t have as many sources as we did before we were cut off from the Portal, but there might still be some things I can find.” He sat down at what looked like a cheap, laminate-top motel desk, but when he laid a hand down on it, the entire surface transmuted into a wide glowing panel of windows and flowing data.

He looked over his shoulder at Dean and held his gaze for a long moment. “I’m going to save you,” he said simply.

Then Sam turned back to the desk, hands-to-interface. Dean wanted to say so much more: questions, arguments, plans. But his head was a lead weight, dragging him down until he was horizontal, and he caught a scent on the pillow, Sam’s scent. It was the first time he could remember actually _smelling_ something in this cold, high-gloss world. It was a human smell, sweat and flesh, and Dean buried his face in it, breathing deep. His eyes closed and he faded away.

***

It felt like mere seconds had passed when he jolted awake, and that feeling of disintegration returned, everything broken down into tiny pixels, ones and zeros, then rapidly resolving into strings of code. No language Dean had ever seen, but he could read it nonetheless, thousands upon thousands of lines curling in on themselves, building blocks of wall and ceiling and faint light illuminating Sam, his broad shoulders, curved spine, narrow waist, computer code resolving into nucleotide sequences, programming into proteins. A digital model molded into man.

“You’re coming with me,” he said without preface. “You and Mom.”

Sam didn’t look over. “Dean, I-- I don’t even know if I actually exist outside of the Grid.” He hunched a little lower over his worktable. 

“Of course you do.” But Dean’s stomach filled with ice at the thought it could be true. He stood up and walked over to where Sam sat, didn’t stop to think whether it was smart, appropriate, or welcome, simply reached out and placed his hand on the vulnerable nape of Sam’s neck. Immediately a surge of energy flowed through the circuits on his suit, a river of light up his arm and into his chest, heat wrapped up in pulses of radiance.

He snatched his hand away. “Jesus. What is that? Why does it keep doing that?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said, leaping up, putting distance between them. “I’ve never had it happen with anyone else before. Not with programs, not with any of the other humans on the Grid.”

But before they could unpack the mystery further, Mary burst in through the door, her disc a burning beacon in her hand. “Someone’s coming.”

“The firewalls at the perimeter?” Sam asked.

“Still unbroken, but I give them about twenty minutes. I think they tracked us through Dean somehow.” She glanced at him. “Not your fault.”

Sam reached over his shoulder, pulling out his own disc. “What do we do?”

“We have to split up,” Mary replied.

“What?” Dean said looking back and forth between them. “What are you talking about?

“Mom,” Sam said. “we should stick together. We’ll defend against any programs—“

“After everything,” Dean stepped up shoulder to shoulder with Sam. “After all this time I didn’t know you were alive—please. I gotta be a part of this fight.

Mary shook her head. “Dean, this fight is just starting. And we’re all going to have a part to play. For now, you’ve got to trust me, son.” She gulped the last word, tears springing in her eyes and Dean felt an answering prickle in his own. He nodded.

“Sammy,” she said firmly. “We’re compromised here. You’ll need to warn the other Kids. Then go underground and stay there. I’ll find you.”

Sam nodded too; they had their orders. She spun on her heel to go out the door. Dean guessed she was headed back to the window lookout in the main room. But before she walked away she turned to them once more. “Be careful, boys.”

***

“Where are we headed?” Riding again in the Impala’s twin, they traveled back the way they’d come just hours before. Sam had extinguished the car’s lights for stealth, which meant inching rather than speeding their way down the mountainside.

“There’s a place in the Center, a rabbit hole. It’s called The Cold Oak Club. Some of the other human Users born here on the Grid like me, ones who are with me in resisting the AZL’s plans, they gather there. At least,” he said grimly, “the ones who’ve survived the Arena so far.”

“Won’t they just track me there, too?” 

“No,” Sam said. “I’m pretty sure they were able to spot our trail because we were here in the Outlands. Back in the Center, things are more crowded, messier, easier to hide. Besides, the place we’re headed? It’s completely shielded from scans. We’ve built up layers of security over the years. No one can find it unless they know where to look.”

Once they reached the flats, apparently undetected, Sam sent them streaking across the dark landscape, Dean paying better attention now than he could on the way in. There wasn’t much to see, just soft black silhouettes against a paler sky the color of shark’s fin, and Dean’s eye was drawn to the flickering energy of the Grid’s Center ahead of them in the distance, twinkling like an entire galaxy come to rest on the ground. But then, irresistibly, he turned his attention from the scenery to stare at Sam’s face. It was bathed in light from the dashboard, his cheekbones cut by blue shadows, his upper lip curved and delicate like the line children draw to represent a bird in flight.

“The city’s bright tonight,” Sam remarked. “The AZL and his minions must be eager to find us.” As if on cue, spotlight beams shot upward like the outstretched fingers of a hand. 

Dean flinched. He wondered if that meant they’d given up looking at Mary’s safe house, and what had happened back there. 

The car crossed over a long, narrow span and dove into a series of tangled, twisted streets not unlike the urban landscapes that Dean knew, some futuristic Manhattan or Detroit. “This is a restricted area,” a metallic voice boomed through the dreary streets. “Authorized programs only. Violators without functionality or residence confirmation will be deleted.”

Dean noticed Sentries up ahead. They were stopping passing programs and checking disc IDs.

“We’d better go on foot from here,” Sam said, pulling the vehicle into an alley.

Dean followed Sam through side streets where the neon pulses of light were fewer and farther between, shielded from sight by impossibly high skyscrapers. Among the abandoned buildings they came to a murky storefront with a glowing talisman set into the wall like a doorbell. It was the outline of an old-fashioned bell with a tree etched in the middle, and Sam gestured for the door to open by waving over it with his hand.

Walking inside, he and Sam boarded a tiny elevator, tall sheets of metal and glass, lit barely enough to see the control console and nothing more. 

“The less power we use, the easier it is to escape detection,” Sam explained. The elevator ran soundlessly down endless levels below the street, Dean wondering what was here underneath, not earth or rock certainly. The dip of his stomach was the only tell that they were descending, and Dean took a moment to be glad he didn't suffer from claustrophobia.

The elevator finally stopped, the doors slid open, and Dean followed Sam through. 

Dozens of figures milled around in the dimness, individuals blending together in a throng of illuminated circuits. “Are they all human?” he whispered sideways.

“No,” Sam responded, using his ridiculous height to scan over the heads of the crowd. “Most here are programs that have escaped from being rectified into the army the AZL’s creating. Unfortunately, there’s only a few of us ‘Special Children’ left.” 

Dean refrained from asking how many had been here at the start. Had they and Sam been playmates? What had childhood on the Grid been like? Dean had been so lonely in his own way as a kid, moving around randomly, constantly at Dad’s whim, no permanent address, fake names. But at least he’d had other _people_ around, even if only briefly in any given place. He wanted to know everything about Sam, all the things that he’d kept from Dean over the years, his secrets shared, his half-truths made whole. But this was neither the time nor place, so instead Dean examined the bar. 

The interior was cramped and seemed deliberately dark, even compared to the unending night of the Grid-scape. Small tables, shadowed alcoves, a long slate-colored monolith of a bar spanned the back wall. 

Sam nodded absently as several patrons greeted him by name, until he spied what he was looking for and his face lit up, all dimples and flushed cheeks. Dean’s gut twisted at the beauty of it, perhaps with a bit of jealousy, wishing he were the one to put that look on Sam's face. 

“Ava,” Sam called across the low rumble of the crowd. The wall of bodies in front of them parted, and as they approached the bar, Dean saw their target was a short brunette about Sam’s age, which made sense if she was one of these Special Kids they’d told him of. Her heart-shaped mouth turned up in a smile of greeting. 

“Sam! Long time no see.” She wrapped her arms around him in a hug, almost disappearing inside his bulk. She pulled back and looked eagerly up at him. “Rumors are flying. The AZL on the move, trouble in every sector, masses stirring, rabbles rousing. There’s even crazy talk of a new User on the Grid.” Her eyes flicked over Sam’s shoulder to Dean and he tensed, pretty sure she was talking about him, unsure what his presence here would mean.

She stilled. “A friend?” she asked Sam, poker-faced.

Sam glanced around to see who might be listening. “Maybe,” Sam said, leaning down to murmur, “Is there somewhere more private we can talk?”

Ava arched an eyebrow, but after a moment nodded her head toward an empty booth to the side of the bar. “Couple of drinks for us, Jake?” she called to the bartender as she led them over, Sam nudging Dean to sit first and then crowding in beside him on the bench seat, leaving tiny Ava by herself across the table from them.

She acknowledged Dean directly for the first time, clearly having deduced who he was. “You’ve caused quite a stir with your arrival. Whispers of revolution are gaining volume among the programs. Not everyone wants to become one of the AZL’s foot soldiers.”

“Ava, we need to get to the Portal, get him out of here. The AZL is looking for him because he’s carrying some lethal code.” 

Sam didn’t introduce him, didn’t mention that they were brothers. And this was one of Sam’s friends, right? Dean wasn’t sure how to interpret that.

The bartender brought some drinks and slung them nonchalantly onto the table, nodding to Ava. Whatever was in the bottles looked like that same liquid light Sam had shared with Dean in the car. Dean grabbed his and took a long swig.

“He’ll have to get through the Wards,” Ava said, sipping her own drink carefully. “The Portal is ringed by a pattern of tracks not accessible to most programs. So unless you want to go shouting, _’Hello! Real Live Human here!’_ to the world, he’ll need a forged disc.”

There was a rumble from the edge of the crowd, volume rising, and then someone shrieked, the sound ripping through the growing clamor like torn metal. Dean looked up, shocked to see a dozen of the AZL’s black-garbed Sentries bearing down on them, a reddish taint spreading quickly through the white-traced crowd. He snapped attention back to Sam who was on his feet, glaring at Ava as if he might leap across the table and throttle her. “You betrayed us?”

“Ah, you are quick on the draw, Sam.”

“How could you?”

Ava just shrugged. “I had no choice. Only one of us is getting out of here, you know that. One’s all the AZL needs. So… every User for himself.” She grinned. “Or herself.”

Sam clenched his fists, but before he could retort, Jake emerged out of the crowd, calm as a priest. He stepped up behind Ava and, between one breath and the next, he took her face in his hands and, _crack_ , twisted her neck, killing her instantly.

“Holy shit!” Her body hadn’t even hit the table before Sam was shouting at Dean, “Come on!” 

He pushed into the roiling sea of bodies, people and programs trying to flee, others rushing to join the fray. Sentries’ deadly staffs swung wildly, and discs began to fly as intruders and dissidents battled in the cramped quarters inside the Cold Oak.

Dean followed hard on Sam’s heels, but he only made it a few steps before a guard tackled him against the bar, shoving all of the air out of his lungs. Drinks flew and glass shattered, and Dean snatched a long-necked bottle as it rolled toward him, slamming it down over the guard’s head. Its sleek helmet fractured, and it derezzed in a shimmer of light.

As Dean rolled to the right, more Sentries flooded through the elevator doors. Chaos erupted. Sam was a blur of black and white, catapulting himself over the ledge of a booth and landing feet first on one guard’s back. The guard twitched on the ground and Sam wasted no time, pulling out his disc and driving it through the chest of the fallen program, watching it dissolve like water on a hot skillet.

Another Sentry stepped forward and hurled its disc. Its human target grabbed a nearby program, one that looked all the world like a teenage girl, and used her for a shield. Her eyes flashed black and she derezzed with a scream, leaving him defenseless, and Dean heard Sam cry, “Andy!” as two other discs struck the User at the same time. The spray of his blood fountained over the floor.

Everywhere Dean looked was similarly surreal, the emotionless, digital disintegration of programs as they were destroyed intermingled with the messy, organic wash of blood as humans-- Sam’s brethren--fought and died.

He flinched when Sam grabbed his shoulder, propelling him forward, a rush toward the exit. One guard dove toward them, staff sweeping in to kneecap Sam, but Sam deflected the swipe, lunging smooth and low, spinning in time to deflect another blow, and another. Dean finally thought to pull his own disc from its sheath just in time to ward off a strike speeding straight for Sam’s head. They moved together as a unit, sparks flying off of their discs, sending up bright flares of derezzed pixels for each guard they killed. Memories flooded over Dean of the hours upon hours of gaming with Sam—Halo, Call of Duty, Dead or Alive— their two avatars sharing a screen, fighting side-by-side. They had trained hard for this moment.

As Sam plowed through, Dean safeguarded his back, and they made slow but steady progress toward the elevator shaft. Then, from behind, where a second before had been emptiness, a Sentry appeared, raising its staff like a battle axe. In a flash, Sam jumped between Dean and its descending arm, turning his back to shield Dean with his body. The laser-sharp edge cut into Sam’s spine in a burst of crimson energy, and Sam screamed. Dean dodged from beneath Sam to derez the guard with a quick slash of his wrist, but it was too late. 

Sam was wounded. Badly.

He fell to his knees, would have fallen on his face except that Dean caught him, supporting his weight. He braced for the hot buzz along his circuits that touching Sam had always brought, but felt only a sluggish pulse. Sam’s body was heavy, unwieldy, slumping sideways, so Dean gripped him closer, bringing his hand up to tangle in Sam’s hair, easing his head to rest on Dean’s shoulder. “Hey, listen to me. It’s not even that bad. It’s not even that bad, all right? Sammy?”

The way Sam felt in his arms, it was all he ever wanted. But not like this. Never like this. 

They were easy targets, but Dean didn’t give a shit, he was too busy holding Sam upright to notice as the last of the Sentries was destroyed, the last of the fugitive programs dispersed. He and Sam knelt alone in the middle of the floor. He continued murmuring words of encouragement into Sam’s ear as around them lights throughout the bar flickered and sputtered. 

It wasn’t until his arms gave way and he had to maneuver Sam down to the floor that he became aware of a trio of figures near the open doors of the elevator. Dean stood slowly, with Sam sprawled out behind him, to face a helmeted guard, and Jake, and the AZL.

“Dean Winchester. A pleasure to finally meet you.” 

“So, you know who I am,” Dean said. He fought an adrenaline surge and composed his features into a mask, although the urge to rush in, to attack with his fists and feet and, fuck, _teeth_ rippled through him.

“I get the newsletter.” The AZL sauntered forward, signaling his lackeys to stay behind. Dean edged slightly back toward Sam defensively, glancing down to see the lines of Sam’s suit pulsing ever more slowly, leached to the color of dirty water, of ashes. 

“What do you want?” Dean asked, although he knew the answer already.

“Look at you. I can’t remember the last time we had a new User on the Grid. Oh, wait. Yes I can. I’m pretty sure it was your mommy.” Dean wanted very, very much to shove his knuckles right through that smirk. “As for what I want, well. Let’s start with the Colt.”

Dean figured he had only one shot at a bargain. “I’ll hand over the Colt code, but first you've got to help Sam. You've got to fix him.

“Why, Dean, you're a sentimentalist. You’ve only just met!” it crooned. “If only your brother knew how much you cared.”

“It's a good trade. You're a hell of a lot more concerned about this code than you are about Sam. Plus, you’ve got him,” Dean jerked his chin toward Jake, lurking on the sidelines, shadowed by the AZL’s henchman. “What do you care if Sam lives or dies?”

“Fine.”

“So we have a deal?” Dean pressed. He was keeping tabs on Sam out of the corner of his eye, could see a small puddle of blood seeping from underneath him. Even now he might be too late.

“No, not yet,” the program said. “You still need to sweeten the pot. I don’t just want the Colt, Dean. I want the whole disc.”

“What do you need my disc for?”

“I imagine I could learn a few trifling things about the world beyond the Portal from you, little User,” it said. “But, more importantly, if I’m going to leave Sam Winchester alive, I’m going to need a little… insurance. Something that helps me keep you two in line.”

Dean reached back and gently slid his disc from its place between his shoulder blades. He hefted it in his hand, balanced and humming. He was tempted to rear back and hurl it right then, bury the Colt in the AZL’s skull, kill the program that had brought so much grief to his family. He’d lose all hope of saving Sam, but end this curse upon them once and for all. 

It was no contest. With a flick of his fingers, he tossed the disc at the AZL’s feet. 

It bent down to scoop it up, then stretched its hand out toward Sam’s inert body, its eyes burning a sulfurous yellow. “Today’s your lucky day, kid.” 

The next instant, Sam gasped, arched, his shoulders pressed into the floorboards, pain slicing across his features. Dean spun around, dropped down next to him, and watched as the lines on his suit burst back to radiance.

“By the way, Dean.” He spared the AZL a glance as it backed toward the door, fingers tracing the rim of Dean’s disc obscenely. “You do realize you could have saved him yourself? Users create this world, shape it, bend it to their will. Only Mary—and your Sam—had the imagination to grasp that, none of the others ever did. Turns out, you didn’t need me. You gave this away,” it burnished Dean’s disk in its hand, “for nothing.”

Dean turned away, didn’t bother watching as it left with its crew, because Sam was moaning and had rolled onto his side, curling in on himself. Dean felt a moment’s dread that the AZL had suckered him, that Sam was not fully healed, but then he opened his eyes. They looked up into Dean’s, wide and young and trusting, and Dean thought to himself, _So worth it._.

“C’mon, kiddo,” he said, and helped Sam up to stumble over to a low, armless couch in the corner of the empty, ruined bar. He knelt on the floor between Sam’s spread legs, sitting back on his heels. “Are you okay?”

Sam leaned forward to take Dean’s face in his hands, and the heat that sparked between them felt like sunlight after forty days of rain. “What have you done?” 

“Don't get mad at me,” Dean pled. “I had to. I’ve waited for you my entire life, I couldn’t stand there and let you die.” He looked up into Sam’s troubled face and then his eyes slid helplessly down to Sam's mouth. Suddenly the two feet that separated them seemed to be too far. But before he could do anything about it, Sam yanked at him, drew him in, his lips an insistent, demanding pressure against Dean’s, his gigantic hands trembling as they gripped Dean’s shoulders. 

It was a kiss, no doubt about it. So he kissed Sam back, death and world domination and incest be damned.

Sam’s mouth was as soft as Dean had dreamed it would be, warm and human, and from the point at which they met there flowed a heat like lava down a mountainside. He felt Sam's tongue touch his lips tentatively, and the thought that this could be, _must_ be, Sam’s first kiss made Dean's belly swoop, his breath hitch. He tilted his head, opening up for Sam, curling his tongue out to tease the corner of Sam’s mouth in return, to slick up his lower lip, to slip in and place gentle strokes against the roof of his mouth. Dean meant to take it slow, let Sam set the pace, but he was unable to resist his sweet, heady taste. 

Sam’s reaction was instant and eager. His hands slid back up, and he pressed into Dean’s jaw with his thumbs, following Dean’s lead and rushing past. He sucked on Dean’s lower lip, Dean bit at his, until they were both gasping for air, bolts skittering and flaring across the branching white-blue lines of their suits like lightning in a summer sky.

Dean dipped his head down, searching for skin, and licked at the salt and musk of Sam’s throat. Sam tilted his head back with a gasp, giving Dean the access he wanted. Dean nipped and sucked, making a hard point of his tongue and sliding it slowly along just underneath the stiff collar of Sam’s suit, feeling Sam shudder beneath him. But when Sam’s hands began to run helplessly along Dean’s sides, his chest, they rasped across the lines of power there, making Dean lift his head and shout as he arched into the searing jolt.

“Jesus,” he moaned as the aftershocks of it coursed through him in long waves. “Jesus, Sammy, do that again.”

Sam grinned, his eyes shining with delight even with the pupils blown wide from desire, and he trailed a deliberate finger along the thick, bright circuit where Dean’s thigh joined his hip. 

Just that simple touch was so intense Dean almost came, as if Sam had grazed the exposed head of his cock. And the thought of his cock made Dean aware how fucking hard he was, how he ached for more, how he was desperate enough to climb up into Sam’s lap, straddling him, pushing him back onto the couch, fitting the points of his body to each curve and jut of Sam’s like he could solder them together with the heat of it.

"I’ve wanted this as long as I can remember," Sam said, low and breathless. "But it’s better than I ever imagined."

"You ain’t seen nothing yet," Dean replied, rolling his hips down into him. Sam jerked, almost bucking Dean off, but Dean moved with him, showed him a rhythm, a perfect, grinding friction and pressure.

“More, more—“ Sam begged, little noises slipping out, cut off and helpless, little flashes of light skittering over his circuits with every thrust Dean made. And when Sam’s hips jittered up, desperate, trying to increase their pace, Dean dropped his weight down more fully.

“Shhh. I’ll get you there,” Dean promised, pulling Sam’s arms over his head and pinning his wrists to the couch cushion. Sam’s chest swelled beneath him, but he settled, rocking up into Dean as Dean rocked down towards him.

Finally, it was the look on Sam’s face, the wonder in it, the way his mouth hung slightly open, slack and wet, that did Dean in. He found himself burrowing his face against Sam’s neck, babbling into his skin, against his throat, a stream of wild, tender praise and possessiveness and promises.

“So good. So good for me. Next time,” he whispered, alternating deep sucking bites and soothing kisses. “Next time, when we’re off the Grid, we’ll be naked, and we’re going to be in a bed, and—“

“And?” Sam asked breathlessly, losing his rhythm again for a moment as he canted upward, Dean releasing his grip so he could shift his weight, getting one knee between Sam’s thighs, urging them open wide and nestling between them, his hands clenched on Sam’s shoulders, their cocks pressed tighter than ever.

“And I am going to fuck you blind,” he growled, grinding down. Sam’s breath caught, nearly a whimper, and he brought his knees up higher, squeezing Dean’s flanks between his thighs, his fingers digging painfully into the circuits on Dean’s back where his missing disc should be as they rutted harder and harder. Dean’s dick blurted thick gobs of precome but he held onto control—white-knuckled, but holding on, goddamn it— until he saw Sam toss his head back, his suit blazing incandescent white as he came.

“Fuck, Sam. Fuck!” He thrust hard three times more, Sam squirming under him, and came, his cock pulsing, pleasure so intense it was almost pain, power bolting through every nerve, every cell, every pixel, like nothing he’d ever felt before.

Dean collapsed, his full weight falling hard upon Sam, but Sam simply wrapped strong arms around him, clasping him closer, one hand at his waist, the other cradling the back of his neck, the touch of his circuits against Dean’s still sending faint energies flickering between them.

“I’ve heard of cybersex,” Dean panted finally, “but this is ridiculous.”

“Shut up, Dean.” Sam kissed him on the temple, like a complete sap.

He rolled reluctantly out of Sam’s arms and onto his back, barely fitting between Sam and the wall. “Hey, I just came in my pants. And I didn’t exactly bring a change of clothes with me.”

Sam huffed out a laugh. “I said ‘Shut up’.” And as Dean watched, Sam propped himself up on one elbow, his eyes narrowed, the pink tip of his tongue sticking out from between his teeth. Dean recognized that same melted-honey feeling he had after the Arena, but this time it was nicely focused around his groin. Then after a few seconds, it stopped and the gooey mess that had settled around his dick was gone.

“I really need you to teach me that,” he said. 

“You really do,” Sam retorted, flopping back down onto the couch with a groan. They stayed like that for a few minutes, quiet, breathing in time. 

“So, what now?” Dean asked. He thought about the AZL and Jake, racing toward the Portal, preparing to open it and unleash a scourge upon the unsuspecting world. 

Sam stood up and reached a hand out to help Dean to his feet. “We have work to do.”

***

The elevator spit them back out onto the street and Sam strode down the street, Dean hustling to keep up. He glanced east, up at the Portal, a colossal shaft of light bisecting the sky in the distance. “They have a huge lead on us, we need a full-on sprint. How do we catch up? The car?”

“No, the car can’t cross the Sea of Simulation.” 

“The Sea of What?”

“It’s this… giant digital ocean between the City and the Portal,” Sam explained, glancing quickly left and right. “Mom and Dad originally programmed it as a safety measure to help prevent stray programs from escaping the system.”

“Well, that’s stupid. And it’s a stupid name,” Dean said. “How do we get across this Sea of Stupidity?”

Sam put his arm across Dean’s chest to stop him, then pushed him back against the concrete wall as a band of Sentries tromped past, patrolling down the cross street. When the coast was clear, Sam whispered to Dean, “We fly.” 

Dean followed the direction of Sam’s nod and found himself looking up toward the top of one of the taller skyscrapers, a line of wingtips from some kind of planes barely peeking above the sharp edge of the roofline. 

“Whoa, whoa, now just hold on a second.” This struck Dean as a particularly bad idea.

“What? What's wrong?” Sam asked, starting to jog toward his target.

Dean wracked his brain for a way to say it that could possibly come out sounding cool, or even passable. “Well, I kind of have this problem with, uh...”  
   
“Flying?” Sam stopped dead, boggling at him. ”You're joking, right?”

“Do I look like I'm joking? Why do you think I drive everywhere in the real world, Sam?” He had no idea how often planes crashed here on the Grid, but it happened enough in the real world that Dean figured it paid to be cautious. 

Sam sighed, the fucker. “Okay, here’s the deal. You’re going to get in the aircraft, and I promise that I won’t let you die. At least until we catch up with the AZL at the Portal. That work for you?”

“No,” Dean muttered, but he strode past Sam toward the building with the fleet of death traps on top.

***

When they got to the flight deck, Dean peeked around the corner and saw that the aircraft was guarded by one of the AZL’s goons. Because nothing in Dean’s life could be simple. The collection of small, bird-winged planes were parked in a double row and looked like a cross between Air Force fighter jets and something out of a Lego kit or one of Gene Roddenberry’s wet dreams. There was no way he was going up in one of those.

He glanced at Sam, hoping he’d come up with some alternative mode of transportation for them. Seriously, they have this whole futuristic space opera virtual reality thing going on and they hadn’t figured out teleportation yet? 

“You have a plan for getting past the guard, genius?” Dean whispered.

Sam shrugged. “We’re Users. We’ll improvise.” And he strode out onto the flight deck. Swearing under his breath, Dean stayed hidden, weaponless, aching for his disc like a missing limb.

As soon as the Sentry spotted Sam, it raised its staff. “Identify yourself.”

“We’re taking a vehicle.”

“You are not authorized,” it said menacingly.

Suddenly, Sam slapped his hand to the side of the program’s helmet, translucent planes of red shuffling along the surface like a magician’s trick deck under his palm. _Pick a card_ , Dean thought, _any card._

The program snapped to attention, moving its staff out of the way. “Right away, sir.”

Sam looked back at Dean with his eyebrows raised, waiting for a cookie. 

“Fine, fine,” Dean said as he hurried forward. “Good job with the Jedi mind trick, Obi Wan.”

Sam led the way into the open cockpit of the nearest craft, a two-seater lit up in ominous red patterns. But as Sam buckled in, and Dean reluctantly settled beside him, the red slowly dissolved, its lines refilled by the same clear white he and Sam both sported. 

“Okay, that’s cool,” Dean admitted, but then jerked and gripped the seat’s armrests as the craft’s engine whirred to life.

Sam smirked at him. “Just try to relax.”

“Just try to shut up.”

“Don’t worry, Dean,” Sam replied. “It’s all in the wrist.” He wrapped his hands around the grips of the console controls and sent them hurtling into the infinite sky.

***

The journey across the digital sea miraculously ended without them perishing in a giant ball of fire. Dean figured this was something to celebrate, regardless of the fact that there were moments, namely during the hellish turbulence they encountered from the first minutes out, that he and his terrified stomach prayed sincerely for death.

Sam brought their craft alight on a flat, circular platform surrounding the radiant cylinder that was the Portal. Floating as it did in the middle of the sky, there was no sneaky way to land, so they simply parked and jumped out as swiftly as they could. There was no sign of the AZL or its minions, no guards at the stairs’ entryway, but Dean didn’t dare hope that they’d arrived first.

“Um, Dean?” Sam was turned around staring back the way they’d come, and Dean looked over his shoulder to share in the sight of the horizon flooded with tiny red dots. It looked like one of those Magic Eye images, and it took Dean a second to process until it suddenly clicked: it was the AZL’s army. Thousands—maybe hundreds of thousands—of programs flying toward them, called to the Portal to make their assault on the world outside.

The two of them turned their backs on the oncoming hoard and rushed up the steep silver and black stairs. When they reached the top they saw, across a narrow ribbon of bridge suspended over the abyss below, three figures silhouetted at the Portal’s base, the light of it blazing up before them like a bonfire.

The AZL’s head came up in surprise, and a moment later the program started toward them. “Sammy! Just the boy I was hoping to see!”

Dean exchanged an anxious glance with Sam, who was obviously as confused and suspicious of this greeting as he was. The program stopped a few yards in front of them, too close for Dean’s comfort. He edged to the left, situating himself slightly in front of Sam.

“Seems your friend Jake here,” the program said, cocking its thumb back toward the Portal, “is having a bit of trouble picking this particular lock. He’s got the will, but lacks the skill.” It shook its head in mock regret. “Young people today.” Then it turned to the black-clad program standing beside Jake and barked out an order. “Get rid of him.”

The AZL’s henchman moved with snake-like quickness, whipping its disc out of the sheath and slicing across Jake’s throat as if slaughtering a sacrificial animal. Dean gasped and flinched, heard Sam’s agonized whisper, “No!” as Jake’s blood geysered out, glossy and almost black compared to the glowing red circuits of his executioner. Before his body could hit the ground, the program shoved it over the edge of the platform, and it plunged out of sight.

The AZL grinned at Sam. “Your turn, Champ. I always liked you better than Jake, anyhow. Go on and open up the Portal for me.”

Dean could feel Sam still shuddering in horror next to him, but his voice was steady and brimming with contempt. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“Because I don't think you want to see what happens when I smash this little baby into a thousand pieces.” In its hand, it held up Dean’s disc.

Dean had no doubt that, as long as the AZL held him hostage, Sam would dance to its tune; he would open up the Portal and unleash Armageddon, the very destiny Sam had committed his life to avoiding. No fucking way was Dean going to let that happen.

So Dean threw himself forward, weaponless, launching a right hook at the AZL’s jaw, a left into its gut. But his attack barely registered and he was flung through the air, landing halfway across the bridge, rolling nearly off. Sam ran to him, reaching out a hand for Dean to clasp. Dean used it to scrabble up, sucking in air. He let go of Sam, raising himself on hands-and-knees, readying for another fruitless attack. He really hoped Sam was busy formulating some clever plan that didn’t involve his surrender or Dean following Jake downstairs.

But before either could make the next move, a single word rang out behind them, sharp and resonant, edged in anger. “Program.”

At the top of the stairs stood Mary Winchester, her circuitry brilliant, so white it was almost blue. She was poised for battle, disc in hand.

“Mom!” Sam shouted.

“You!” the AZL spat. “I don’t know how you survived _again_ , User, but prepare to be terminated.”

Still holding Dean’s disc in its left hand, the AZL cast its own at Mary with its right. The weapon tore across the gap between them, but Mary dropped to one knee just in time, leaning aside, and it passed over her head. The disc circled back, rising, aiming again for Mary on the backswing. This time she met it with her upraised disc. Dean shielded his eyes as the two weapons clashed with an outpouring of sparks, and the AZL’s disc sprang away, cleaving the air on its return course to its master’s grip.

“Your time is up, human,” it said. “It is our time now. Sam will lead my army of programs off of the Grid and we will create a new world order.”

Mary began walking slowly forward, onto the bridge, keeping the AZL’s attention firmly on her, “Not if I stop you.”

“You’re persistent, I’ll give you that.”

“I created you,” she said. “I’m stronger than you.”

“Not any more.” The AZL hurled again, a blindingly fast release. Its disc covered the distance in an instant, but Mary managed to deflect, this time with a slight miscalculation, but enough that the AZL’s disc sliced a thick, red line across her upper arm. 

“Stop!” a deep voice shouted, and a shadowy blur flew past, the AZL’s own minion. The servant grabbed its master, pinning its arms to its sides. As they struggled, the traitor’s helmet disappeared, its face revealed, and Dean saw that it was the program from the Arena, the one that looked just like Dad. 

Mary rushed forward, crying, “My god, _Winchester_?” while the AZL screamed threats and obscenities. The program paid no attention to either, but forced the AZL to drop Dean’s disc, which tumbled and slid across the floor to Sam’s feet. Sam scooped it up and shoved it into Dean’s hands.

"Alter the program!"

“What?”

“We need to use the Colt,” Sam insisted, “but the AZL already knows the code. Can you modify it enough to slip by whatever protections it may have constructed?”

Dean’s head spun, and he gripped the disc so tight in his hands he thought it would snap. He had no freaking clue how to do this, but he shut his eyes anyway, envisioning the source code Dad had sent him on that postcard, lifetimes ago. He imagined rewriting an initial command in the first line, tweaking the algorithm in the fifth. It was such a simple program; Dean dared not revise much for fear that it wouldn’t execute correctly for its original purpose. He couldn’t change a lot, but had to change just enough.

He looked up at Sam. “Is it on there? What now?”

Mary called out, “Throw it to me, Dean!”

He did, aiming true and landing it smack dab in her outstretched hand. As she gripped it, she gestured with her free hand, and the bridge they stood on suddenly parted at a seam. It began to retract, separating Mary and the still-struggling pair of programs from Dean and Sam, leaving a quickly widening gulf between them.

Mary looked across at them calmly. “Sam, it’s time.”

“No. We’re not leaving you!”

“Take Dean and go,” she commanded, then spun, sweeping her leg out and tripping the AZL, allowing John’s program to slam it into the ground. She added her weight and held Dean's disc—the disc with the Colt program—above her head, ready to strike. Her glance came up to meet with Sam’s, then Dean’s, holding them both for long seconds. “Go!”

Dean wasn’t going to make her ask again. He grabbed Sam and pulled him inside the column of the Portal, warmth and light enveloping them, hexagons streaming upward like a tunnel in a playground slide.

“See you on the other side,” Dean said, clapping Sam on the shoulder and holding on as tightly as he could, as if he could lock them together through his grip alone. The now-familiar buzz of current streamed up his arm, and he gave a second’s thought to how he’d miss it in the real world.

“I hope so,” Sam replied, and he leaned in, mouth covering Dean’s in a kiss that could have meant good luck and could have meant farewell. Dean surged up into it, deepening it, erasing all trace of goodbye from Sam’s lips. This would work, Dean had faith.

Sam reached back, unsheathing his own disc and holding it in his hands, both arms extended above his head. Dean looked out through the swirling cascade of particles thickening around them like frosted glass. The last vision, implanted forever in his brain, was Mary burying Dean’s own disc in the AZL’s chest, phosphorescence roiling and crackling out in yellow streaks of lightning, streaming across its face and armor, spreading across the platform, dripping into the unseen sea below and enveloping the teeming rush of programs that had just enough time to spill over the Portal’s platform before the entire Grid exploded in light.

 

 

**[/End of line]**

  
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